Colorado—The Bright Romance of American History

by F. C. Grable

It was in 1804, that the formal transfer of the Louisiana Territory had been made at St. Louis, first from Spain to France, and then from France to the United States. Time was unimportant in those days, and although France had owned her possessions in the New World for two years, she had not taken formal possession until the day of the transfer to the United States. This was accomplished on the morning of March 9, 1804, with such ceremony as was possible in that primitive community. Down came the Flag of Spain! Up went the Flag of France! Down came the Flag of France, and up went the Stars and Stripes to float forever! So at last, after three hundred years, was launched on its brilliant career, the country that Pope Alexander VI had given to Spain, and which she had lacked the ability to develop, and the capacity to govern. One hundred years later, the incident of the lowering and raising of the flags was celebrated on that very spot, by one of the greatest displays of modern times. To make it a fitting centennial celebration, St. Louis voted Five Million Dollars in bonds; there was a stock subscription of Five Million Dollars; the Government appropriated Five Million Dollars; and the State of Missouri donated One Million Dollars, making a total of the exact sum that was originally paid for a territory, out of which fourteen states and two territories have since been carved, that now contain the homes of 18,222,500 people, nearly a fifth of the 92,972,267 population of the United States, a population that in 1804 was but 6,081,040.

In all these years, the Spanish did little in New Spain to extend and colonize the country. The Spanish race seemed to have lacked the pioneer instinct; they were a luxury loving people, and did not possess the hardy qualities and stout hearts that could conquer unmurmuringly nature's comparatively insurmountable barriers. They liked the plunder that had intoxicated them under the rule of Cortez, and the enslavement of the humble and effeminate natives of a territory whose climatic surroundings sapped their strength and made them weak. The subjugation of the active and warlike northern Indians was a very different thing, much to the surprise and disappointment of the Spanish. They would fight. Large in stature as Coronado states in his letter to the King, they were made of stern stuff, and their fierce attitude interposed a permanent barrier to the encroachments of the Spaniards from the south. They were never meant to be enslaved. Think of making a menial of a Comanche, or an Apache! Think of old Geronimo, a body servant! Think of taming a full-grown wild cat, with its glaring eyes, its tearing teeth, and scratching claws!

When the Apaches found that the Spaniards were repopulating the West Indies with slaves from the mainland of this Continent, and had captured some of their own tribe and carried them into captivity, the indignation and wrath of these natives knew no bounds. They could fight like demons, and when cornered they could destroy themselves, but they could never be taken alive and enslaved. If this country had been inhabited by the docile and easily subdued negroes, we would have felt the domineering blight of Spain to this day. The reason Spain failed to rivet its paralyzing hold upon this nation was because the negro was not a native of this country, but a transplantment from Africa.

So the Spaniards made no further efforts to penetrate northward into a territory which they claimed to be uninhabitable for civilized man. They had made but one settlement—Santa Fe in 1605, which, next to St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest town in the United States. Near Santa Fe, Coronado twice wintered his army on the Rio Grande, in the Province of Tiguex. For eighty-five years the Spaniards possessed Santa Fe, when, in 1690, there was an uprising of the Indians, who captured the town, burned the buildings, and massacred or drove out its inhabitants. It was at this time that valuable manuscripts are supposed to have been burned, that might have had to do with Coronado's expedition. The Spaniards always made triplicate copies of their State papers, for their better preservation, and it is copies of these papers that the Archæological Society hopes to unearth, in the mouldy and cob-webbed cellars under the monasteries of Old Spain. For two years, the Indians held Santa Fe, when, defeated in battle, they again gave way to the Spaniards, who later on, were to abdicate in favor of the United States.

1805 Washington made history at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1776, by the capture of a body of Hessian soldiers. About two years afterwards a child was born in that village whose name must have been given it by a pious mother with her Bible on her knee, and not, I ween, by the father, Captain Pike, of the Revolutionary Army, who would have doubtless called his son after one of the great generals of that time. It is in the thirtieth chapter of Genesis, we learn of a Zebulun for the first time, in the story of the sisters Leah and Rachael.

Zebulon Montgomery Pike went to school at Easton, Pa., and before he was twenty-one was made a Captain in the Army, which shows that it is a good thing to have a father with influence. In 1805, Pike started, under the authority of President Jefferson, on an expedition to discover the source of the Mississippi River. His trip, lasting nine months, was successful, and upon his return, he started almost immediately with a party to explore geographically the Louisiana Purchase. He outfitted at St. Louis, which was the last western point where supplies could be obtained.

In Lieutenant Pike's party there were twenty-four, including a guide and interpreter, and he had in his care fifty-one Indians whom he was to return to their tribe, the Government having rescued them from other tribes who had made them prisoners. He went by sail boats up the Missouri River from St. Louis, while the Indians traveled by land, the two parties camping near each other at night. He kept a journal in which he made a daily record of events, which he copied and sent in with his report of the expedition to the Government after his return. Some excerpts are given to help the reader to a better and closer knowledge of the man and the times. He records, as he passed through Missouri, his impression of that State in this language:

"These vast plains of the Western Hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa, but from these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the United States, the restriction of our population to some certain limits and thereby a continuance of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontier, will, through necessity, be constrained to limit their extent on the West to the borders of the Mississippi and the Missouri, while they leave the prairies incapable of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country."

With regard to the Indians placed in his care, we read this:

"* * * Every morning we were awakened by the mourning of the savages, who commenced crying about daylight and continued their lamentation for the space of an hour. I made inquiry of my interpreter with respect to this practice and was informed that it was a custom not only with those who had recently lost their relatives, but also with others, who recalled to mind the loss of some friend, dead long since, who joined the mourners purely from sympathy. They appeared extremely affected, tears ran down their cheeks and they sobbed bitterly, but in a moment they dry their cheeks and cease their cries."